General purpose or all-purpose household cleaning compositions for hard surfaces such as metal, glass, ceramic, plastic and linoleum surfaces are sold commercially in both powdered and liquid form. The powdered compositions consist mainly of builders and buffering salts such as phosphates, carbonates, silicates and the like and these compositions are diluted with water prior to use. While use concentrations of such compositions usually provide good inorganic soil removal, they tend to be deficient in removal of organic soils such as the greasy/fatty/oily soils typically found in the domestic environment. Further, such compositions tend not to be compatible with germicidal ingredients because of the presence of anionic detergents and high concentrations of builder salts.
On the other hand, all-purpose liquid cleaners have met with greater commercial acceptance because they have the advantage that they can be applied to hard surfaces in neat or concentrated form so that a relatively high level of surfactant material is delivered directly to the soils. Because of these advantages, much research and development effort has been expended on formulating all-purpose liquid cleaning compositions which are stable upon storage, have good physical properties and are effective in removing inorganic and organic soils.
Liquid hard surface cleaners generally have been classified into two types. The first type is a particulate aqueous suspension having water-soluble abrasive particles suspended therein, which particles are palpable. Some of the cleaners of this type suffer a stability problem and other cleaners of this type have received poor acceptance by consumers because of their "gritty" feel which causes many people to be reluctant to use then for fear of scratching the surface to be cleaned. The second type is the liquid detergent without suspended abrasive and, seemingly, this latter type is preferred by consumers. While this second type generally is a mixture of surfactant and builder salt in an aqueous medium, the product formulations in the market place have varied widely in composition.
One liquid product which achieved some success was based upon a mixture of soap, alkylbenzene sulfonate and fatty acid alkanolamide plus inorganic builder salts. This liquid product exhibited good temperature stability and a desirable viscosity, but tended to exhibit cleaning disadvantages when compared with another product based upon a mixture of alkylbenzene sulfonate and ethoxylated alkanol plus builder salts. However, the latter composition usually required a high concentration of a lower alkylbenzene sulfonate hydrotrope in order to achieve homogeneity in the presence of builder salt and the inclusion of hydrotrope resulted in lower viscosity and the need of thickening agents.
Other all-purpose liquid products have been prepared which incorporate a solvent such as a terpene. For example, German patent application No. 2,113,732 discloses the use of terpenes as antimicrobial agents in washing compositions. British patent no. 1,308,190 teaches the use of dipentenes in a thixotropic liquid detergent suspension based composition. German patent application No. 2,709,690 teaches the use of pine oil, a mixture of largely terpene alcohols, in liquid hard surface cleaning compositions. U.S. Pat. No. 4,414,128 teaches the use of terpenes with solvents of limited water solubility such as benzyl alcohol in all-purpose cleaning compositions. The terpenes are used to provide cleaning as well as to control sudsing. A similar composition is disclosed in European patent application No. 0080749 which comprises surfactant terpenes, butyl carbitol and builder salts. Again, the terpenes are included for cleaning and as suds regulators.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,272,395 describes a high foaming detergent composition suitable for use in dishwashing and in the cleaning and disinfecting of hard surfaces obtained by combing a quaternary ammonium compound having a formula: ##STR3## wherein R.sub.1 and R.sub.2 are alkyl groups each having 9 to 11 carbon atoms, R.sub.3 and R.sub.4 can each be an alkyl group, an alkylether group or a hydroxyalkyl group having 1-3 carbon atoms, or a benzyl group; and X.sup.- is either Cl.sup.-, Br.sup.-, I.sup.-, NO.sub.3.sup.-, 1/2 SO.sub.4.sup.2-, CH.sub.3 SO.sub.4.sup.-, C.sub.2 H.sub.5 SO.sub.4.sup.-, 1/2 HPO.sub.4.sup.2-, or CH.sub.3 COO.sup.-, and a co-surfactant selected from the group consisting of short chain anionic surfactants having 3-8 carbon atoms in the hydrophobic groups, low alkoxylated nonionic surfactants having 0-4 ethylene oxide and/or propylene oxide groups in the molecule, and mixtures thereof.
Despite the extensive efforts in formulating all-purpose liquid cleaning compositions, there is still a need for a liquid product with both effective cleaning properties and disinfecting properties when applied neat, as well as at various concentrations when used in water. Also such products should be effective at varying water hardness levels, should have desirable foaming characteristics, and should cause little or no spots or streaks in the presence or absence of rinsing. Further, the resultant product should be homogeneous at temperatures from about 5.degree. C. to about 49.degree. C. and should exhibit a desirable viscosity. In addition, such a product cannot be achieved by simply adding a germicidal quaternary ammonium compound to one of the liquid products discussed above because the quaternary compounds are rendered ineffective by the proportions of anionic detergent and/or builder salts present in those compositions.